Browsing Theses/Dissertations - Philosophy by Title

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In this dissertation I argue that Murdoch’s philosophical-ethical project is best understood as an anti-Enlightenment genealogical narrative. I maintain that her work consistently displays four fundamental features that ...

We moderns have lost a grasp on some of our most commonly used moral concepts. Or rather, the moral concepts that we use everyday have, in our grasp, lost the intelligibility they once enjoyed. Contemporary moral judgments ...

The ultimate aim of Kierkegaard's authorship is to build up his reader's character. Kierkegaard's signed, religious works suggest this reading, but some interpreters say that the more indirect, pseudonymous character of ...

It is the focus of this dissertation to articulate Pascal’s position, which may be viewed
as a middle ground between skepticism and dogmatism; a position that induces the reader
to seek. The second and third chapters ...

This dissertation is a comparative study of the philosophy of John Rawls and the Confucian Analects regarding the idea of a sense of justice. The first aim of this work is to correct a view that has been advanced by several ...

It is my purpose in this thesis to explore the "reality" of illness, using philosophical phenomenology as a guide. In particular, I am concerned to show that the experience of illness, rather than representing a shared ...

Under the assumption that God deliberates when he decides which world he will create, I set out to build a model for God’s deliberation. The first chapter will lay the ground and outline each chapter. From Chapter Two ...

Neo-Kantian constructivism aspires to respond to moral skepticism by compelling
agents to act morally on pain of irrationality. According to Christine Korsgaard, a
leading proponent of constructivism, we construct all ...

Starting with William James’s lectures on saintliness in The Varieties of Religious Experience, twentieth and twenty-first century moral philosophers have attempted to understand the relationship between moral philosophy ...

What are the freedom-relevant conditions necessary for someone to be a morally responsible person? I examine several key authors beginning with Harry Frankfurt that have contributed to this debate in recent years, and ...

Contemporary moral realists assume that goodness is a property susceptible to Kripkean/Putnamian developments in philosophy of language and metaphysics. However, close attention to the actual use of the term ‘good’ reveals ...

The role of theism in Thomas Reid’s epistemology remains an unresolved question. Opinions range from outright denials that theism has any relevance to Reid’s epistemology to claims that Reid’s epistemology depends upon ...

Direct Realism is the view that human perception takes physical entities and their
mind-independent properties as immediate objects. Although this thesis is supported by common sense, many argue that it can be dismissed ...

The role of human rights is disputed in Christian moral theory. When human rights are discussed, it is common to find that a problematic understanding of the human agent is assumed in those discussions, one that understands ...

In his Retrieval of Ethics, Talbot Brewer complains of a fundamentally inadequate moral psychology within contemporary ethics, most importantly the limitation of human desire to the instrumental. In response, Brewer, ...

Augustine’s Confessions is a complete and unified document. Augustine utilizes sign to bridge apparent textual gaps and to establish an intimate relationship with his reader. Specifically, I assert that Augustine establishes ...

This work examines the aim of Socratic philosophy in Plato's Euthydemus. To understand the conflict that occurs in the dialogue between Socrates and his sophistic rivals, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, one must evaluate ...

I investigate Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology of love and its relation to ethics. I argue that his phenomenology of love provides a possibility for developing ethics. I rely on the saturated phenomenon of the icon and his ...